To celebrate St. Louis Craft Beer Week, we review six Missouri beers that aren’t distributed to Illinois. And they’re all mighty fine beers, we concur, but one totally blows us away. We try really hard to make Missouri our sister state, infusing this episode with tons of Missouri trivia and a MO-themed “Who said it?” game. There’s also Ryan’s Missouri Literary All-Stars batting lineup and lots of Michael McDonald. Yah Mo B there!

It’s Iowa or bust on this one, and we have the help of Marie Cummins to drink several Toppling Goliath brews. Once again, Marie brings the spot-on food pairings and superior research, we ruminate on how TG would fit in to the Chicago market if they ever expanded distribution, and Craig tortures us with some Biblical character/celebrity trivia. We also discuss the Templeton Rye, X-Men, Beyonce, and the depressing reality of a diabetic Cookie Monster. Yeah. Go Hawkeyes.

Brewmaster Brett Porter sits down with us at the Goose Island Brewery to drink beer and discuss a variety of subjects, focusing on the exciting things happening at his rapidly expanding brewery. He talks about this year’s Pitchfork beer, why Madame Rose is the best wine barrel beer they’ve done, and the secrets behind why BCBS is so good and why this year’s variants will be even better. We’ll also talk about Lagunitas, Bob Mould, the genealogy of mulberries, FOBAB, the pastoral beauty of Idaho, meeting Killer Mike and El-P, the maybe returns of Baudoinia and BCBS Rare, AB-InBev’s impressive stable of endless resources at his disposal, and Craig’s suggestion of finally doing that Pear BCBS. And that’s just barely scratching the surface. Expect to learn a lot from this one, folks.

We’ve picked five different fruited beers from local breweries for this one, and then we went and tossed a bunch of fresh fruit in the beers just because we can. It doesn’t always work out. Craig shares a little BCBS news he got from Brett Porter, Ryan gives a bonus review of Coors’ Summer Brew, and we recap our experiences getting a tour of Une Année’s brewery and checking out Beermiscuous before its opening weekend. Juicy!

Cory King wasn’t satisfied with just brewing amazing beers at one brewery, so he opened another one. We craft an audio love letter (with moderate profanity) to five of his barrel-aged saisons and wild ales. To no one’s surprise, it’s one of the best tasting episodes we’ve done. David Sullivan joins us and vies for title of “best guest ever.” We discuss the best musical side projects, make Cantillon comparisons, expose the secrets of Craig’s successful kissing booth empire, compare a beer to the TV show “Sports Night” and make some tough decisions about our favorite member of the St. Lunatics. Bridges are burned!